Michael Njuguna
1 May 2008
Nairobi — Pyrethrum farmers are trying to find out when and where the rain started beating them after the country lost its position as the world's leading producer of the flower.
Two decades ago, Kenya used to produce 70 per cent of the world's pyrethrum but it has now fallen behind Tasmania and Rwanda.
A former Pyrethrum Board of Kenya (PBK) director, Mr Samuel Kihiu, says local farmers now produce about 700 tonnes of pyrethrum annually compared to their counterparts in Rwanda who produce 1,000 tonnes.
Ironically, only six years ago, farmers in Molo were producing about 1,400 tonnes of pyrethrum annually for which they earned about Sh300 million. That was 400 tonnes more than Rwanda produces.
Pyrethrum, which is a labour-intensive crop, used to employ hundreds of small- scale farmers but this has since changed and more growers have been shifting to horticultural crops.
One of the reasons why farmers have been shifting to horticulture is, according to Mr Kihiu, the prompt payment for produce delivered to the buying companies or their agents.
Farmers are also making more money per acre from crops such as snow peas than they earn from pyrethrum.
Mr Kihiu says a snow peas farmer can earn about Sh200,000 in three months from an acre of peas while pyrethrum only earns one about Sh50,000 per year on the same size of land.
Homegrown and East Africa Growers companies have been encouraging farmers to shift to the production of garden peas by paying them every fortnight for crop deliveries.
Mr Kihiu regrets that farmers were switching from pyrethrum yet lack of enough raw materials has been blamed for the failure to make the newly built Sh400 million pyrethrum processing plant in Nakuru fully operational.
According to him, the pyrethrum processing plant requires about 1,500 tonnes of flowers for test runs.
The drop in pyrethrum production has also been attributed to the recurring ethnic violence in areas like Molo where farmers used to put about 50,000 acres under pyrethrum. This acreage has dropped to about 10,000 acres.
Although the Government had established a potato cold store with the assistance of the Dutch Government in the 1980s, the store, which was rehabilitated last year at a cost of Sh40 million, had not been put to good use because farmers were destabilised by the violence that has, since 1992, recurred in the area every election year .
Mr Kihiu believes that Kenya could still reclaim its place as the world's leading producer of pyrethrum if the Government funded research into high yielding pyrethrum varieties.
According to him, the development of high yielding clones had enabled farmers in Tasmania to produce 87kgs of pyrethrin per hectare while their Kenyan counterparts produce only 7kgs. Farmers are paid according to pyrethrin extracted from their flowers.
The former official has asked the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya to also support the production of pyrethrum in areas such as Kisii, Nyandarua and Naivasha which are not subjected to election violence.
A PBK report compiled in 2001 indicates that farmers in Molo produced 1,387 tonnes of dry flowers during the 1998/99 season. They were paid Sh156.8 million for the produce.
In the same year, farmers in Naivasha and Gilgil produced 621 tonnes of dry flowers which earned them Sh68 million while growers in Mau Narok made Sh14 million.
According to the report, Molo has the potential to produce about 4,000 tonnes of pyrethrum flowers annually. This is four times the quantity produced by Rwanda.
By 2001, Subukia farmers were producing pyrethrum with the highest pyrethrin content of 1.68 compared to flowers grown in Naivasha and Gilgil which had 1.50.
In that year, there were 365 pyrethrum growers' self-help groups, 52 cooperatives and 1,151 individual growers in Molo which was at the time accounting for 60 per cent of the flowers grown in the country.
The report indicates that in 2000, about 3,800 hectares were under pyrethrum production in Molo with each hectare producing about 750kgs annually.
In areas such as Nyandarua where pyrethrum used to be one of the key cash crops in the 1970s, farmers have gradually abandoned the crop and replaced it with cabbages, carrots and potatoes.
At Kaheho, where vegetables are grown under rain-fed conditions throughout the year, potatoes are now the dominant crop following the implementation of the national potato policy.
Before the policy was introduced, middlemen used to pay farmers about Sh400 for 210-kg of potatoes. However, the farmers now earn about Sh600 for 110kg during the wet season and over Sh2,000 during the dry spell.
Most of the farmers in Nyandarua did not have access to pyrethrum driers and used to rely on the sun-drying process which took many days.
Due to this, and the bad state of access roads, most growers often opted to sell their flowers to merchants who in turn delivered the flowers to the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya in Nakuru Town, thus reaping the benefits of the bonus payments.
The failure of the government to review the Pyrethrum Act - which was passed during the colonial times - also thwarted efforts by small-scale farmers to grow the crop.
Farmers were initially required by the Act to put at least three acres under pyrethrum, yet many small-scale holders had less than three acres.
Again, many pyrethrum farmers had been relying on bonuses to pay school fees and they abandoned the crop after the board failed to pay them promptly for flower deliveries.
Although pyrethrum production has dropped dramatically in recent years, there is still hope that the introduction of high yielding varieties could win farmers back.
For instance, the area under pyrethrum production in Rift Valley dropped from 17,000 to 12,000 hectares between 1997 and 1998 but has been picking up over the years in some districts.
Farmers say that pyrethrum plants are not ravaged by diseases and pests as is the case with vegetables.
Pyrethrum products are also likely to maintain their popularity in the world market as many countries move away from synthetic products.
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